RE: PH technical issues (was RE: Why Fraktur is irrelevant

From: D. Starner (shalesller@writeme.com)
Date: Thu May 27 2004 - 22:02:38 CDT

  • Next message: Mark E. Shoulson: "Re: Phoenician, Fraktur etc"

    "Peter Constable" <petercon@microsoft.com> writes:

    > > From: D. Starner [mailto:shalesller@writeme.com]
    > > Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 5:16 PM
    >
    > [David replied to me off-list, but as there's nothing particularly
    > private or controversial, I'm taking the liberty to respond on list, as
    > it seems relevant for the thread.]

    My fault.
     
    > > * A comparable discussion could appear involving Fraktur and Latin
    > characters
    > > and Chao and Chang.
    >
    > I agree, but only somewhat. I think those situations are probably not as
    > representative of the casual-, non-specialist-user scenario, and that in
    > that case Sally and Latisha are probably more likely to be paying close
    > attention to the fonts being used. Even for the non-specialist
    > situation, in a Fraktur/Antigua case (the Chao vs Chang is definitely
    > out at least for *non-Asian* non-specialists), Sally is telling Latisha,
    > "Make sure it shows up with those dark, old-English-looking characters",

    That was the point of Chao vs. Chang. Surely there's some group of students
    that might need to display Fraktur characters in a school report on writing
    who aren't readily familiar with the normal Latin script.

    > > * Sally probably won't have a Phoenician font, so this fails
    > > no matter what Unicode decides.
    >
    > Well, if Phoenician is to be encoded in the 05xx block, you're right. If
    > it's encoded separately and platform or word-processor vendors bundle
    > fonts that provide coverage for various ranges of Unicode, then she very
    > well may have a Phoenician font.

    I'm not familar with fonts for most of the Plane 1 characters, except for
    Code2001. I imagine there are commerical fonts for many Plane 1 scripts, but
    I doubt they'll show in Windows or MacOS in the near future.
     
    > > * If they did use a Phoencian font, they could still be surprised
    > mid-presentation
    > > when they discover the school's computers don't have a Phoenician font
    > installed.
    >
    > Certainly true; but that is an independent cause that could just as well
    > be used to argue for not encoding any new script. You might as well say
    > because the school's computer didn't have Arabic fonts there was no
    > reason to encode Arabic. So, I think it's not a relevant
    > counter-argument.

    The school's computer quite possibly doesn't have Arabic, and that it is a
    good reason not to encode Arabic _for Sally and Latisha's sake._

    -- 
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